Beautiful
by Mawaridi
Summary: Sometimes, Pansy is beautiful. Millicent never is. (femmeslash)


"Don't you ever get tired of it?" says Millicent, tying up her hair.  
  
Pansy is lying face down on the bed and she's beautiful, long loose limbs and bare muscled shoulders and long yellow-gold hair all over the place like raw silk. She rolls over and stretches, luxurious, arms lifting over her face, and in that moment she could be absolutely anyone. A faceless, drowsy naked girl uncurling, fernlike, from sleep.  
  
"Mmmtired of what?"  
  
She lowers her arms now and smiles with her eyes closed. Millicent likes to cover herself up afterwards, but Pansy relishes these naked moments the way she relishes cruel words, rolling around in them like a cat in the sun, soaking up every drop. Naked is the only way she can be beautiful, the only time her pug nose and hard features become less important than the long, silky lines of her body and the soft purr at the back of her throat.  
  
"Tired of hiding," says Millicent, holding her robes closed, right up around her neck. "Tired of all this secrecy."  
  
Millicent is never beautiful. She's too tall, too heavy and solid to be anything near pretty, or even attractive. She's destined to be one of those women people call "handsome," or worse, "stately," like somebody's ancestral home. More suited to hanging portraits than posing for them.  
  
Pansy sits up at the edge of the bed, bare feet flat on the floor, and wraps her long hands around Millicent's robed waist from behind, drawing her in between parted knees. She rests her cheek against Millicent's broad back and breathes in the smell of her; salt and musk, soap and clean cotton and sweat.  
  
"I'm not hiding," says Pansy, her arms coiling around Millicent like Devil's Snare, never letting go. "I'm right here."  
  
"You know what I mean."  
  
Millicent isn't thick, but she's not clever; she's not sharp and caustic like Pansy. She has to think about Transfiguration theory before it really makes sense, and she has to measure Potions ingredients carefully, to the gram. She doesn't have Pansy's careless flair for tossing newts eyes and dragon scales in willy nilly and hoping for the best. She isn't relaxed and casual, lounging naked on a Sunday afternoon, and she isn't effortlessly beautiful, or confident, or cool. But she can feel Pansy breathing, warm and damp through her robes, and she's never actually felt this comfortable and self assured. Not really. Not while someone else was in the same room.  
  
How can Pansy not want to scream that from the top of the tallest astronomy tower? Millicent wants to write it in huge letters across the walls of the common room, but instead she settles for writing it secretly. With an index finger, under the tables in the Great Hall. With the toe of her shoe, in the grass beside the Quidditch pitch. With the tip of her wand, on the desks in the charms classroom. With her lips, on the back of Pansy's neck, in the dark.  
  
"I know what you mean," says Pansy, muffled against Millicent's back, her mouth making warm, shivery shapes through the cotton. "I know. But it's so much easier like this, isn't it? No stupid boys. Why do we need their approval?"  
  
It isn't about approval, really, but Millicent doesn't think Pansy fully understands that. Everything she does revolves around how other people will react; what other people will think; how angry or hurt or impressed or intimidated other people will be. Her every word is carefully weighed and judged to create maximum impact, whether to please or to wound. Her every gesture is measured and deliberate.  
  
Millicent wants to tell the world that she is in love, because the feeling is just so big that she can't keep quiet about it any more, but Pansy would only want to tell if it would get her something in return, and how could it? She's already clever and respected, and while she isn't good looking in any classical sense, her attitude is at once stand-offish and teasing enough to keep all the boys enthralled. They already know they can't have her, and that makes her all the more attractive. If they knew why, all the mysterious allure would be gone.  
  
"I love you," Millicent says plainly. She can feel Pansy smiling behind her, and it isn't the slow, calculated smile she uses in public, but the dazzling grin she breaks into when she just can't stop herself. Pansy hates that smile, because she says it'll give her wrinkles by the time she's thirty, but Millicent loves it. Can't get enough of it.  
  
"I love you," she says again, just for that smile.  
  
"I know," Pansy murmurs warmly. "And isn't that what matters?"  
  
Of course it's what matters. But Millicent won't stop wanting to tell the world. She won't stop putting it down everywhere she can, writing it in careful, invisible letters that no one else ever sees. One day she might slip up, and leave the words behind for somebody to stumble across.  
  
For now, though, she keeps them to herself, written in spilled sugar at the dinner table and quickly brushed away, or whispered softly into Pansy's hair. Secret words. Hidden. Beautiful. 


End file.
